Getting your first real customer is a big step for any business owner. There are a lot of ways to get the word out about your business. What do they mean? You could look at the article How to Get Your New E-commerce Site’s First Order.
You have worked hard and put in time to get your first order. Good job! This is a good start for your business that sells things online. Still, with your first order, you have some work to do. You should do everything you can to make sure your customer gets the goods as quickly and easily as possible. You can handle your first order in one of two ways. This article will tell you about them:
Handle your first dropshipping order by hand
With this method, you will need to place an order on AliExpress for the same products that your customer ordered. Then, you need to give your suppliers the right name, address, and other information, and then pay for it.
Next, we’ll explain step by step how the process works.
Take your first customer’s order
The first thing to do when a customer places an order on your online store is to accept the order. This is the first step in the process of making a deal.
Check the order of your customer
When you get the order, you start a new part of your job. First, you should check to see if the order is right. Please make sure you get all the details, both about the products and about the customer. Remember that the shipping address is important because it will affect how long it takes to get your package. If your customer gets the late products, they will be unhappy.
Second, you have to find out how the order is going. This step takes a long time, but you should always pay close attention to it so that the next steps go well.
Check the Order
Before you confirm the order, you have to make sure that the customer has done everything right. The order can then be confirmed. And when you get the money, you can move on to the next step.
Put in the order on AliExpress
Now, you need to look on AliExpress for the exact product your customer ordered. You might have a lot of trouble with this step.
Why? During the process, you should think about how and when the item will be shipped. It’s up to you to find the best supplier, who can deliver quickly and work with the shipping method that your customer wants.
It is a hard thing to do. Even though AliExpress has a lot of suppliers, it might be hard for you to find the right one. You might sometimes need to find a place to store your goods. It can be expensive and take a lot of time.
Also, you may need to talk to your supplier when you place the order on AliExpress. Why? To let them know that you do dropshipping. It is very important because you need to make sure that your customer gets the same product without any third-party information like a logo, invoice, or brand name.
There are a lot of risks involved. You need to be careful and spend as much time as you need on this step.
Choose the best method of shipping
You’ve now made your first purchase on AliExpress. You and your supplier will decide on a good way to ship the product, and then it will be sent out. You don’t have to be the one to ship the product. Even so, there might still be a lot to do. You need to get in touch with your supplier to make sure the product ships on time and to get the tracking number after the product has been sent.
Find out how the order is going
When you get the tracking number, send an email to your customer to let them know you’ve sent the package. Then, you should get in touch with your customer every so often to let them know how their order is going.
It’s important to connect with your customers. It shows you are serious about making this deal. They will think well of you, which could lead to more sales.
Handle the process after the sale
Now, the product has been sent to the customer. What should you do next? Try to get feedback. Since this is your first order, you need to know what your customer thinks about the product and services. And if a customer has a problem, fix it and give them something in return. This will help you in the long run.
Automatic Method: Handle Your First Dropshipping Order Through dropship-empire
Handling your first order automatically through dropship-empire is a better way to do it, especially if you will be getting a lot of orders in the future. Once you have everything set up correctly, dropship-empire will save you a lot of time and effort by syncing your orders from your stores, placing orders in bulk to your suppliers on AliExpress, pushing tracking information to your store after the order has shipped, etc.
You only need to click on the “Place order to AliExpress” button and pay for the order.
Link Up Your Shop
After making an account on dropship-empire, the first thing to do is install dropship-empire from the Shopify App Store and connect your store to dropship-empire .
- Click “Install app,” and then add information about your store on this page.
- Click “Yes” when the page asks if you’re sure you want to link dropship-empire to the email address you used to sign up for your Shopify Store.
You will be sent to a page where you can choose a pricing plan. If you are new to dropshipping, the free Basic plan is all you need.
After you connect the store, dropship-empire will help you move on to the next step, which is automatically syncing your order to dropship-empire.
Match up your order with the dropship-empire
Not your job to do this step. dropship-empire own it. Once you get paid for an order, that order and your customer’s information will automatically sync with dropship-empire and go to the “Awaiting Order” tab.
With dropship-empire, you won’t make mistakes or click the wrong thing. dropship-empire automatically syncs orders from your online store, so you don’t have to worry about making mistakes, forgetting to add a customer’s shipping address, entering the wrong contact information, etc.
Send the order to the provider
Under “Awaiting Order,” you can send an order to AliExpress. You can send one order at a time, or you can send 100s of orders at once.
And since it keeps product and customer information in sync, you don’t have to spend too much time looking for mistakes. dropship-empire wants to save you time.
Pay the Money
Now, you can click on “Awaiting Payment” and then “Make Payment” to pay. dropship-empire will automatically send you to the payment page for AliExpress.
- Once you’re on the AliExpress page for your order,
- Click on “Payment Due.”
- Pick the order for which you want to pay. Then click the button that says “Pay for the order(s) you chose.”
- You’ll see a window, and all you have to do is finish the payment.
- Once the payment is made, dropship-empire will handle the rest.
Send the Package
Your supplier will send the product to you based on the details you give. You don’t have to do anything during the process.
Also, since you run a dropshipping business, the shipment is made by your supplier. You might have a lot of trouble with how long it takes to get the product. But with Dropship Empire, you can use the shipping settings to make sure that the shipping method you choose is the best one based on the delivery time and cost range to a certain country or region.
Dropshipping Tip from the Pros
One thing you should know about your first order, no matter how you handle it, is dropshipping taxes.
Under the new EU VAT policy, all companies that do business online must pay product tax. it has been true. So, if you do dropshipping inside or outside the EU, this is something you need to pay attention to. Check out our article called “Influence of EU VAT Reform on Dropshipper” to learn more about EU VAT.
Also, you can read our article Dropshipping and Taxes: Do You Have to Pay Taxes for Dropshipping? to learn how to avoid tax risks.
What Else You Need to Know About Your First Order
Since your first sale is so important to making more sales, you should give it your full attention. You should make sure that your order goes smoothly. In other words, you need to make sure your products get where they need to go quickly and safely.
If you don’t, your customer will be unhappy with the delivery and want a refund. You can do two things to cut down on the complaints:
Pay attention to the address
Make sure to check the address twice before you send the product. It may sound easy, but buyers really do make these kinds of mistakes all the time. This is especially true if they use a tool that automatically fills in the information in the browser. It would always leave out important details, like the customer’s other address, door number, etc.
The process of checking takes a few minutes, but dealing with a wrong order can take much longer.
Since dropshipping is how your business works, you can do it by going to dropship-empire> Order > Customer details. Take a look at the example below to get a better idea of how it works.
Make On-time Delivery
Your store will get a good name if you deliver quickly.
And the best way to keep customers from complaining about late deliveries is to send out your products as soon as you can. Once you’ve sent the package, you should let your customer know how it’s going via email or another method.
If you run a dropshipping business, it might be hard to get things to customers quickly.
What you should do is place the order as soon as possible on AliExpress. Place the order as soon as you get the money so that your suppliers can get the product to you as soon as possible.